


shimmer in gold and yellow - artificial steps towards recovery

by recoilshipping



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 06:35:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20253748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recoilshipping/pseuds/recoilshipping
Summary: after the war with the Ignis, Jin tells everyone that certain memories of his are gone.but he’s lying.





	shimmer in gold and yellow - artificial steps towards recovery

a room. yellow lights on all the time. darkness in putting on a VR headset and having to play that stupid stupid card game. alone. loneliness.

hospital rooms. hushed voices and the expectations that he’s magically get better. get better. get better.

if they talked to him enough. if people who thought him important stayed near. if his surroundings stayed familiar. if he broke out of his comfort zone. if. if. if.

but none of their methods worked. seeing them walk by day and night and other transient faces of patients and interns and doctors and nurses. busy with papers and grieving tears in sorrow and joy and pain as conditions better and worsen. zombie like in the way they do things, the same sorts of things happening to different people. alive and dead all at the same time.

though he doesn’t think he’s a good judge of that. how to tell when what he’s been doing for the past ten years doesn’t feel like either one. sitting with his knees bent, almost curled into a ball. sunlight yellow streaming in through windows.

don’t move. stay still and watch time pass the same way, day after day. because he’s still there, in that small room.

until Shouichi delivers to him news. piece by piece, truth. justice. retribution.

an exit. a way out.

then Bohman had shown up, molten yellow and gold.

not unlike those skeletons he used to see, the way it seemed to happen out of nowhere.

but it wasn’t nowhere. he’d learn that it was an artificial intelligence given free will. at first the AI was called the “Light Ignis” and later named “Lightning.” a little yellow program with golden markings.

yellow in the spotlight shining overhead of the black space where his consciousness data had been kept. and yet still he could somehow see everything Lightning did. but he could only watch. how people faded a little before their avatars fractured into tiny glowing pieces of data. don’t go. not in this cruel way. he’ll be alone.

he remembers fear, at the dragon with its jaws wide, poised to attack. how he had feared for his life, uncontrollable shaking.

he doesn’t feel any of those things anymore.

because everything that was natural to do before has become foreign. there’s no need to do it anymore, why cling to things to hurt himself. why had he spent so long like that. he doesn’t want to be huddled away anymore. he doesn’t have to be. he can move around, and those old feelings that told him to stay still don’t say anything now because they are gone.

like the auto pilot when Lightning was in control is still here, it’s still here, he’s still here. but Lightning isn’t.

he sits at a table outside Shouichi’s yellow hot dog truck and watches a golden sunset. when he walks outside unaccompanied like it’s nothing he wonders if this could’ve happened sooner. if those feelings could have dwindled on their own, no miracles or magical intervention.

**Author's Note:**

> s3 lets Jin catch a break after all the bullshit he's been thru. but i sure don't. 
> 
> huge inspiration from YELLOW by Yoh Kamiyama, listen [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_lap6dzSUc)


End file.
